A Martian Panorama

It may look like a scene from the US southwest but it’s actually somewhere much, much farther away… 206.3 million miles away, to be exact — it’s a view from the Curiosity rover looking toward the center of Gale Crater, where the informally-named Mount Sharp rises up 3.4 miles from the crater floor.

The image above was created from eight separate Mastcam (right) images acquired on December 23, the 136th Sol of the MSL mission. Click to see the full-size version, which can be scrolled left and right.

The color here is “true-color”; that is, it hasn’t been adjusted to appear as it would in Earthly daylight like other Mars images sometimes are. See more images from the MSL mission here.